


Incisions

by ohgodmyeyes



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: After Mustafar, Body Horror, Darth Vader Needs a Hug, Depression, Emotional pain, Euthanasia, Gen, Healing, Horror, Hurt No Comfort, Manipulative Sheev Palpatine, Medicine, One Shot, Pain, Physical Pain, Reader-Insert, Reader’s Gender is Irrelevant, Suicidal Ideation, Suitless Darth Vader, Torture, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:21:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22244785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohgodmyeyes/pseuds/ohgodmyeyes
Summary: The new Emperor’s apprentice has suffered extensive injuries, and has been confined to an isolation chamber in the aftermath of the incident which caused them.You are the doctor who has been entrusted with his care during this time, but he seems to hate being near you.When he experiences a complication in his healing, you are obliged to help. However, you can only help this patient so much— even if you’d like to do a lot more.
Relationships: Darth Vader/Reader
Comments: 14
Kudos: 79





	Incisions

Panic was beginning to set in. You had only been treating this man a few days, and before that, you had scarcely touched a patient with your hands since completing your training. That had been years ago— and now, here you were, holding an impossibly sharp scalpel to living flesh. 

Of course, it was only _barely_ living: This patient’s body had been burned; rendered almost completely unrecognizable as one belonging to a human. His ‘skin’ was all harsh crimsons and charcoal-blacks, with a corrugated texture not unlike the inner layer of a cheap piece of cardboard, or a wet wad of tissue paper. In spite of his living, breathing presence, you thought, he should not have been alive— and you should not have been caring for him. This was droids’ work, if it was anyone’s.

It made no sense for you to be here. None of it, really, made any sense.

“I know this is painful,” you whispered to him more harshly than you intended, “but you can’t shed tears right now. Do you understand?”

A muffled noise; pained— then, he nodded his head. You sighed as you leaned over him. He’d been placed on a metal gurney for you before you’d arrived in his isolation chamber, to make him easier to work on. He was going to cry despite your instruction, you knew— he seemed to cry all the time. But you had a responsibility to warn him anyway, you thought, of the pain he’d experience if he did so as you restored his eyesight with your tiny blade.

Darth Vader’s eyelids (and lips, too), it seemed, had sealed themselves shut in the middle of his bacta soak the previous night. It was a relatively common complication for burn victims... however, his particular burns were among the most severe you’d ever witnessed on a living patient. Besides that, they covered what was left of his body nearly completely.

He was in immense pain, that pain was constant, and he had apparently been this way for nearly two weeks. To top it all off, he was both blind and mute, too, now— if only temporarily. You were experienced as a healer, at least in theory: If it had been up to you, a patient in his state would not have been kept alive like this; you’d have considered it a torturous indignity. However, that was not up to you— it was up to his Master. 

His Master, of course, was Emperor Palpatine: Freshly-crowned, and in total control of your actions in regard to the care of his apprentice. 

When you had told him a medical droid would have been better-suited to your job, he hadn’t listened— had insisted Vader suffer the continuance of your care, in spite of the fact that your speaking to him caused him enormous distress. Something about your voice seemed to drive him to distraction; sometimes, it appeared to bother him more than his injuries.

Your voice was soft, sounded kinder than you felt you actually were, and had a distinct intonation you’d developed growing up in one of Naboo’s vast coastal regions. The Emperor had implied that it might remind his apprentice of someone or something from his past, and it did— clearly. However, Palpatine had also implied that memory would make him happy.

It did _not_ make him happy.

Right now, in fact, you knew that if you’d elected to cut his lips free first, he’d be wheezing and growling at you to quiet yourself. He was always rude to you, and you were tired of it— so, his eyes came first, even though you hated looking at those as well: They were ceaselessly, _maddeningly_ aware. 

They told you too much; more than you wanted to know, and he couldn’t seem to control what they revealed. They shone brightly in the harsh light of his isolation room, generated tears at your words, and flashed his inner wrath at you with increasing frequency. That bothered you the most; his rage made your throat feel as though it were closing.

 _”Mmmmgh!”_

It was everything you could do not to slice clear through his eyeball at his muffled scream. He had no eyelashes; they’d burned off in whatever incident had rendered him a charred hunk of flesh, but there was at least a ridge along his skin to guide your hand. He’d made you feel jittery about your work at the best of times, and right now was not the best of times— if you had been an elastic, you’d have been just about to snap.

You’d had more than enough of this, and of him.

As his iris appeared to you again, a stream of fresh tears escaped from out the corner of your incision. His only remaining fist clenched; another half-silenced screech reverberated from off the walls of his sealed mouth. He really did cry a lot, you reflected, but who wouldn’t have, in this position? You tried to keep this at the front of your mind.

“I’m sorry— I told you, didn’t I?” Even in your professionalism, you had become more brusque with him as the days had gone by. You wanted to be kind; wanted to make him feel better, but he had decided not to let you. It left you feeling a bit sad for him, but mostly it made you frustrated— he would have preferred a mechanical doctor, and you thought one would have done a better job with him anyhow.

In spite of this mutual lack of desire to be anywhere near one another, though, you and Vader had no choice in the matter: It wasn’t up to you.

Bitterness at this grim fact was the reason the first thing he saw upon having his lid reopened was your scowling face, twisted in open disdain. It hadn’t been intentional, but it was inevitable, even though you could tell it hurt his feelings. You didn’t understand why it should hurt him, since he seemed to hate you so much— but, this made you feel guilty.

You evened out your expression; repeated yourself more gently, “I’m sorry.” Then, “One more to go— and after that, your mouth. Okay?”

He swallowed at an apparent lump in his throat; nodded as he blinked tears and tiny drops of blood from the only eye he could open. He looked absolutely helpless— pathetic, really, if you were to be honest. His status as Palpatine’s apprentice, however, combined with the energy he emitted to remind you to be wary of him.

Even when he annoyed you, you never prodded him; never provoked him deliberately with your voice, or anything else. You always spoke as little as you had to, but speaking was sometimes necessary; anyway, you didn’t understand why he seemed to interpret your care as an attack. He should have been glad to hear a kind and familiar voice, you thought, but he never was. At first you had wondered what, precisely, triggered his disdain for your speech— but by now, you had ceased to care very much.

You had to be here every day, and like him, you only wanted to get it done and over with— so, you sliced through the centre of his other eyelid, as quickly and accurately as you could manage in your anxiety.

“There. That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

He almost seemed to sigh, which you appreciated more than a growl or a yelp.

“Good boy,” you said without even thinking. 

You’d meant it nicely, you really had— but there came the growl, then: Throaty, and concealed by the thin, excess membrane which had formed in the crevice between his lips. Those unsettling, blue eyes of his glared amber daggers at you.

“I’m sorry,” you said yet again. You were always apologizing to him.

He coughed, now, as best he could.

“Quiet. I’ll open your mouth for you.” You tried to be soothing, but you knew you weren’t.

Having pulled away to examine your work on his eyes from farther back, you leaned in again to inspect his lips. They were sealed much as his eyelids had been, but the new layer of skin was superficial. This would not be so bad— not this part. You raised your blade once again, and placed it at the edge of his mouth.

“Stay still,” you said, as you cut a very clean line through that small, thin sheet of superfluous flesh.

“Augh!” He didn’t wait to shout. Pinkish blood mixed with his spittle and sprayed your face.

“I’m sorry!” You betrayed more of how flustered you felt with your apologetic outburst than you intended, and that upset him.

“Shut... _up_.” It still clearly pained him to speak, but less so than it had just a week ago.

For as much as he hated you, you had been doing good work with him, you thought. You felt fed up with his bad attitude.

“Be nice,” you chided as you stood up straight again and set down your scalpel. As you wiped your face with your sleeve, “I’m only trying to help you.”

“I _hate_ you.”

“I’m not especially fond of you, either, but I want you to get better.” You were honest, at least. It helped you stay calm.

He looked up at you with those awful eyes of his; stared. He’d taken to staring at you, but never with gratitude or admiration. Just hatred, laced with sorrow. You didn’t understand it; you barely wanted to.

He didn’t care what you wanted. 

“You make me... feel like... _trash_ ,” he wheezed. 

You didn’t know what to say, because he had never been quite so forthcoming about his feelings— not with regard to his own self, and not with his words, anyway.

“I... don’t mean to,” you tried. You still had to examine his burns; still had to apply salve to the worst of them. Why could he not have waited until later on in your visit to make it even worse than it needed to be?

You got the distinct impression that making things even worse than they needed to be was typical of young Vader, injured or not, but you didn’t say so.

“You make me wish...” He coughed again; this time it was louder, and crackly. It sounded exceedingly painful. 

He stopped for long enough to make you ask, “Wish what?”, although you weren’t entirely sure why you wanted to know.

“...wish I had died,” he finished more weakly. His eyes began to fill with tears again; the sting from your fresh cuts made him wince and clench that fist of his once more. Your throat tightened, which he noticed.

Another shot of burning amber through the cerulean paleness of his eyes; then, his hand relaxed and your breathing capacity returned. 

“You’re getting stronger,” you observed, as calmly as you possibly could. “Soon you won’t need me anymore, and I won’t be here to make you feel that way.” You paused to think, then added, “This would be easier for both of us if we made the best of it, you know.”

He drew in a breath; let it out very slowly. Maybe he agreed with you— he didn’t say.

“Your Master has a suit for you,” you ventured, almost conversationally. “It’s a life support suit— so you can walk again, and leave this room.” You tried to inject hope into your voice, because you thought that might help.

It didn’t seem to.

“I don’t... _want_ to leave this room,” he said quietly. It would have been a whisper, but it sounded too much like gravel to truly be one.

“What do you mean?” Surely he hated being stuck here.

“I want... to _die_ ,” he rasped. He sounded almost mournful, now; dejected. You couldn’t begrudge him those feelings.

“I... don’t blame you,” you answered, which you weren’t sure was cruel or compassionate to say. They had not taught you all that much about cruelty or compassion in medical school, after all— hands-on healing, these days, was all done by droids; it shouldn’t have been necessary. _Why did the Emperor want you here?_

You caught Vader staring intently at you again; this time you stared back, right into his eyes. You didn’t like to do it, but this time, his expression softened instead of angered you. Rather than hatred or rage, right now it simply told you that he was sad.

Cavernously, heart-wrenchingly _sad_.

Finally— almost so quietly you couldn’t hear it— he said to you, “Help me, then.”

“...What?” You felt confused. He usually despised your assistance.

_”Help me.”_

He didn’t mean...? “I... can’t. You know I can’t.” 

More tears, at that, from your patient; tears that begged you. As a doctor, you would typically have wanted nothing more than to end his pain— especially if he wanted it to end, too. His injuries should not have been survivable; to see him was to know his life was torture. You’d have loved to have shown him mercy.

However, you had been very specifically instructed by Emperor Palpatine to make him well again.

Killing him was out of the question.

You apologized again; he groaned in pain— whether physical or emotional, you could not tell. You decided to begin your examination, then, because this was not going to get any better. You reached for a bottle of sanitizing solution with which to douse your palms before directly touching his wounds, but instead, your hand went back to your scalpel: Shot straight to it, with no input from you.

You gripped the handle; again, involuntarily. Your eyes went back to Vader’s gnarled face. His jaw was trembling, and his gaze— though tearful— was sharply focused on you.

He was doing this.

“Stop,” you said. 

_”Kill me,”_ he gasped.

“No,” you answered, as steadily as you could. Your arm moved anyway; moved so that you were holding your blade high over him. An image of yourself burying it repeatedly into the charred decimation of his abdomen flashed through your mind, but you couldn’t tell whether it was you or Vader who had put it there.

“Kill me!” This he actually shouted, but his exclamation was followed quickly by a violent coughing fit. His heaving wracked him from his head to the spent, melted stumps which were once his legs— but, the grip on you he had with his mind did not waver.

You wanted to kill him. You really, truly wanted to. Not because you disliked him or feared him, though, and not because he was unpleasant to you. You wanted to do it because he deserved mercy; mercy in some form. It seemed to you he wasn’t receiving it from his Master, and he certainly hadn’t from who or whatever had burned him beyond recognition.

He could not, however, get it from you right now either. It wasn’t your job to pity Darth Vader, it was your job to force his survival— so that is what you tried to do, as you wrestled against the grip he had on your arm with the Force.

He was _so strong_. He shouldn’t have had the capacity for this in his condition, but he did, and you could not control him— could not protect him from himself.

Without warning, your arm began to thrust downward. You fought it, but only succeeded in moving your blade a few inches away from his vital organs. It plunged into his thigh instead, and he gasped hoarsely at the pain. You couldn’t imagine what it felt like.

You looked at his face; he looked back at yours. His eyes were still begging you.

You felt like you might cry, now, too.

“Stop,” you told him. Then added, in futile desperation, _”Please.”_

Your arm withdrew your blade from his flesh; went back up high in the air— but, he wasn’t obeying you. It came back down again; you fought it once more, and this time it ended up glancing off of his hip-bone and sinking into the edge of his groin. There was not much to be discerned of that area from the outside, but you knew that his inner workings were still in-tact. 

His mouth went wide, which hurt him as well; he squeezed his eyes shut, and that made it even worse. Dark blood began to seep from around the handle of the scalpel you'd unwittingly buried in him; you tried to let go of it, but he still forced you to hold on. His noises were just gasps and wheezes, now— he was using up all of his energy trying to die. You wished he would go back to simply being rude.

You continued to plead with him, “Stop! _Stop it!_ This isn’t going to work! You’ll only—” 

Then, all of a sudden, your hand was free. You were so relieved to have it back under your own control that you didn’t pull your scalpel out with it— you just snatched it back and held it to your chest as you stared in horror at the new injuries Vader had forced you to impose on him. Terror at what the Emperor would think swept over you; then, you heard a sound:

The gliding doors to the airlock— the only way in or out of the room. That noise was followed by,

 _”Anakin!”_ in Palpatine’s own distinctly wrathful manner, as the Emperor himself marched into the isolation chamber.

What name had he just used? You didn’t care. You turned to him; began to stammer, “S-Sir, I didn’t— it wasn’t—” 

_”Quiet,”_ he hissed at you. Then, “Get out.”

Hands still stained by his apprentice’s blood, you warned him, “He still has my—” 

Before you could finish, though, Palpatine had made his way to Vader’s side and had wrenched the wayward blade out himself with what looked to be a painful twist of his weathered hand. Your patient sobbed, now— you were used to hearing him cry, but his bawling was something else entirely, and you felt selfishly grateful that it was all he could do. An actual scream from him would have been gut-wrenching.

You were dumbfounded for a moment; then, you remembered who Palpatine really was— and you near-ran to get to the airlock, because in that moment, you only cared about sparing yourself his abuses.

Let him take those out on Darth Vader— after all, _he_ was the one who wanted to die. You hadn’t even wished to be here in the first place.

You shuddered as the doors slid shut behind you. You could still hear the Emperor as you waited for the second set to open:

“What was _that_?”

Vader answered breathlessly, “You... won’t... _tell_ me if she’s... _alright_.” If who was alright?

“Patience,” said Palpatine coldly.

“I need... to _know_. I could... _feel_... but...”

“Quiet,” the Emperor insisted.

“That... doctor’s... _voice_...”

And there went Vader, with more of his crying— and again, you couldn’t blame him.

The last thing you heard from the room was his Master calling for a droid; the medical droid— the one you knew was better than you at being a doctor, especially if the patient was anything like the one you had just left to writhe in his own self-imposed pain.

At least, you thought, he was getting stronger. Soon he would be ready for his suit, and his new limbs— you’d seen them; they were a marvel of both medicine and engineering— and he would regain some of his self-sufficiency. 

Hopefully, he would not use that autonomy to harm himself. 

You stepped lightly down the corridor of Palpatine’s ship, away from Darth Vader— hopefully, for the last time. His zeal in his attempt to kill himself, ironically, had convinced you of his capacity to heal. Not long ago you thought he’d likely be better off dead; you realized now, though, that he was more than strong enough to continue on.

You were glad you hadn’t killed him, and you hoped his Master would give him something constructive to put his energy into. For all his rude behaviour and unpleasantness, you thought he deserved that, at least— especially since you had no doubt in your mind that he would live, now. He was too powerful not to... whether he wanted it or not.

A distinct feeling began to set in; one that finally provided you a sense of relief. You knew, suddenly, that you would not be asked to return the next day: Vader’s regained capacity made you a danger to him. If he could control your mind and body, his Master could no longer use you against him effectively (and you had become sure, now, that was what he’d been doing).

You decided, at that realization, to go back to your quarters. You would pack your things in the hope of being reassigned somewhere different, now that you had ceased being useful here. The thought of being apprehended to unknowingly torture somebody unsettled you, and you didn’t wish to repeat the experience.

You had never looked forward to leaving a place— or a patient— more in your entire life.

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to do this again, but didn’t want to have to bump up the rating for ‘Weak Ointment’, or piss off anyone who liked that one but hates this one. Thanks for getting through it!
> 
> ❤️
> 
> ‘Incisions’ stands by itself alright, I think, but here’s a link to the ‘first one’ anyway: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21902935
> 
> This is my favourite kind of suitless Darth Vader.


End file.
